Cyndi Himmelstiere on the substantial transformation of the East End market, the trade-offs of regeneration, and the small lessons of what has and has not been preserved
I have been going to the Old Spitalfields Market on Sunday mornings for fourteen years. The market has, in that time, undergone substantial physical and commercial transformation. Building on my earlier dispatches at Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat, I want to write today about whether the transformation has, on balance, made the place better or just more expensive.
The Market
The Old Spitalfields Market, for those of you who have not been, sits between Commercial Street and Bishopsgate, in the substantial corner of the borough that has, over the past two decades, transitioned from substantial industrial decline to substantial financial-services and creative-industries dominance. The market itself is the substantial covered hall, dating in its current form to the late nineteenth century, that has historically housed a fruit-and-vegetable wholesale operation and, in more recent years, a substantial retail market specialising in vintage clothing, craft food, and what the marketing materials describe as ‘design-led independents.’
According to The Evening Standard, recent reporting on the East London market economy has documented that Old Spitalfields, in its current form, attracts approximately four million visitors per year, making it one of the more substantially trafficked markets in the city.
The Substantial Rebuild
The market has been, in the past fifteen years, substantially rebuilt. The original Victorian hall has, in its essential structure, been preserved, but the surrounding buildings have been substantially demolished and replaced. The new buildings, designed by a substantial architectural practice and completed in stages across the 2010s, are, in physical terms, substantially better than the buildings they replaced. They are warmer in the winter. They are dryer in the rain. They have, between them, substantial public toilets, which the previous generation of market buildings substantially did not.
The rebuild has also, however, substantially changed who is trading. The traders in the new buildings pay substantially higher rents than the traders did in the old buildings. The substantial higher rents have, in turn, substantially shifted the trader mix. The substantial small independent operators who used to sell things from a folding table for a Sunday day-rate of thirty pounds have, in the substantial majority of cases, been priced out. They have been replaced, in many cases, by substantially larger operators selling substantially more expensive products from substantially more permanent installations.
The Trade-Off
The trade-off is, in my view, real. The market is, on substantially all measurable physical dimensions, better than it was fifteen years ago. It is, on substantially all measurable commercial dimensions, more expensive than it was fifteen years ago. It is, in terms of who is trading, substantially less diverse, both in the demographic sense and in the price-point sense. According to The Guardian, recent research on London market regeneration has documented this pattern across substantial portions of the broader London market estate.
This is not, dear reader, a story of villainy. The people responsible for the rebuild were, on the available evidence, attempting to produce a market that was substantially more usable and substantially more financially sustainable than the one they inherited. They have, on those metrics, substantially succeeded. The cost, which is the loss of the substantial price-point and trader diversity that the previous generation of buildings supported, is, in important respects, a structural rather than an intentional cost. It is what happens when you upgrade the physical infrastructure without protecting the rent levels.
What I Miss
I have written before, in my previous columns on East London markets, about the specific things I miss about the previous generation of Spitalfields. I miss the woman who used to sell hand-knitted hats from a folding table for fifteen pounds each, who has, as far as I can determine, gone. I miss the man who used to sell second-hand books from a substantial pile of cardboard boxes, who has, as far as I can determine, gone. I miss the fact that you could, in 2011, find a thing for under ten pounds, which you can, in 2026, in the substantial majority of cases, no longer do.
The things I miss are, in some sense, not the market’s fault. They are the natural consequence of the rent levels that the rebuild produced. The rent levels are, in turn, the natural consequence of the capital costs of the rebuild. The capital costs are, in turn, the natural consequence of the substantial transformation of the surrounding property market. Each link in the chain is, in some sense, defensible. The cumulative effect is, in some sense, a market that I love substantially less than I loved the previous one.
The Wider Question
This is, in my view, the under-discussed question of the substantial East London regeneration of the past two decades. The buildings, on substantially all measurable dimensions, are better. The neighbourhoods, on substantially all physical dimensions, are better. The street lighting works. The pavements are level. The drainage is, finally, adequate. These are real achievements, and I will not, in this column, dismiss them.
The cost, however, is the substantial loss of the small operators, the small affordable price points, the substantial population diversity, and the substantial sense, available to me on a Sunday morning in 2011, that I might, on entering a market, encounter something I had not expected. The current market is, dear reader, substantially predictable. The current market is, in substantial respects, exactly what I would expect a substantially regenerated central London market to look like.
What I Would Do
I do not, in this column, propose a policy solution. The policy solution would have been, in 2010, to substantially constrain the rent levels in the rebuild plan, in a way that would have allowed the substantial small-operator and low-price-point trade to persist alongside the substantial higher-priced trade. This solution was, at the time, available. It was not, for various reasons, taken. It is, fifteen years later, substantially harder to retrofit.
What I will do is keep going on Sunday mornings. I will, deliberately, buy from the substantial smaller operators that remain. I will, deliberately, ask the prices of things I do not intend to buy, in the small and probably futile hope that this signals to the operators that there is a market for the lower price points. This is, again, the absolute floor of civic engagement. It is, again, what I have to offer.
For more of my dispatches from this end of the borough, you can find me at my page on The London Prat.
For satirical takes on regeneration-as-cultural-question, see Private Eye.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
